Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I

He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for his wedding, as a condemned criminal.

On the 11th of May, 1758, Richard William Vaughan was executed at Tyburn. By his side, on the same gallows, there was another forger: William Boodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army agent named Calcroft, and expiated the offense with the first forger of Bank of England notes.

The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when it is considered that none of his notes were negotiated, and no person suffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except the twelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeed, the imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection would have instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There was no endeavor to copy the style of engraving on a real bank note. That was left to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press twice, the words added at the second printing, "For the Governor and Company of the Bank of England," could have fallen into their proper place on any one of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have made the forgery clear to even a superficial observer, was the singular omission, of the second "n" in the word England.16

The criticism on Vaughan's note of a bank clerk examined on the trial was: "There is some resemblance, to be sure; but this note" (that upon which the prisoner was tried) "is numbered thirteen thousand eight hundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number." Besides there was no water-mark in the paper. The note of which a fac-simile appeared in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular design in the texture of the paper; showing that the water-mark is as old as the bank notes themselves.

Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskillfulness of the forgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crime was considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from its very novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time no remorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set up Vaughan as a warning to all future bank-note forgers. The crime was too dangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differs from other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtain, and of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending its accomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations in the bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such property as he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable and defeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is so considerable as to awaken close vigilance or inquiry. To carry their projects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced to the hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitely increasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have no accomplice; he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property; he needs no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his own individual right hand can command thousands; often with the certainty of not being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him to baffle the pursuit of justice.

It was a long time before Vaughan's rude attempt was improved upon: but in the same year (1758), another department of the crime was commenced with perfect success; namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent purposes, of real bank notes. A few months after Vaughan's execution, one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman; several bank notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, setting up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post-office, ordered a chaise and four, rattled away down the road, and changed a note at every change of horses. The robbery was, of course, soon made known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as having been stopped at the bank. To the genius of a highwayman this offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the figures "1" he could find into "4's." These notes passed currently enough; but, on reaching the bank, the alteration was detected, and the last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable consideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that "any person paying a valuable consideration for a bank note, payable to bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood right to receive the money of the bank."

It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging bank notes to perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman, named Mathison, a watchmaker from the matrimonial village of Gretna Green. Having learned the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures, he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected, and absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he favored the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank of Scotland notes, and regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end of February he took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel-street. His industry was remarkable: for, by the 12th of March, he had planed and polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the water-mark, printed and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to travel and to purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of shoe-buckles at Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually detected at the Bank of England. He had got so bold that he paid such frequent visits in Threadneedle-street, that the bank clerks became familiar with his person. He was continually changing notes of one, for another denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to make spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion arose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, and Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged that, on the trial, an experienced bank clerk declared, he could not tell whether the note handed him to examine was forged or not. Mathison offered to reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were shown to him; this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his crime.

Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he appeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached. So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money, that it appeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Notes were issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds and thousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper of Threadneedle-street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in due course, so complete were all its parts; so masterly the engraving; so correct the signatures; so skillful the water-mark, that it was promptly paid; and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particular department. From that period forged paper continued to be presented, especially at the time of lottery drawing. Consultations were held with the police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made to trace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went, like a sluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word "blood-money" was known. Up to a certain point there was little difficulty; but, beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of the officer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery always paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewards were circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.

While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared an advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successful applicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrument maker; who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informed that the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man was desired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with something of the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparently troubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth; a large patch was placed over his left eye; and nearly every part of his face was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hectic cough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of the servant. After some conversation – in the course of which he represented himself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune – the interview concluded with the engagement of the applicant; and the new servant was directed to call on Mr. Brank, at 29, Titchfield-street, Oxford-street. At this interview, Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for his love of speculating in lottery tickets; and told the servant that his principal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, at each of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twenty pound bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them; and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The young man fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, was suddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street, congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various other offices in the neighborhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase more shares. Four hundred pounds in Bank of England notes were handed him, and the wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were satisfactorily effected. These scenes were continually enacted. Notes to a large amount were thus circulated; lottery-tickets purchased; and Mr. Brank – always in a coach, with his face studiously concealed – was ever ready on the spot to receive them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but had he known that from the period he left his master to purchase the tickets, one female figure accompanied all his movements; that when he entered the offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at the window, hovered around him like a second shadow, watched him carefully, and never left him until once more he was in the company of his employer – that surprise would have been greatly increased.17 Again and again were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bank obtained a clew, and the servant was taken into custody. The directors imagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts; that the flood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would at length be dammed up at its source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and it was found that "Old Patch" (as the mysterious forger was, from the servant's description, nick-named) had been sufficiently clever to baffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield-street was searched; but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement of forgery was to be seen.

All that could be obtained was some little knowledge of "Old Patch's" proceedings. It appeared that he carried on his paper coining entirely by himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his own engraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. With a private press he worked his own notes; and counterfeited the signatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had no effect; for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a press elsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notes became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to have satisfied him; but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a newspaper of 1786 relates to the same individual:

"On the 17th of December, ten pounds were paid into the Bank, for which the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts; and on examining the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to have been obtained in the same manner. In the one, the figure 1 was altered to 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon the whole, nearly one thousand pounds."

To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, added smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice; except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of his genius for fraud.

At that period, the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate; and many experiments were made to evade it. Among others, one was invented by a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which, for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great style, gave splendid dinners, and did every thing on the grandest scale. Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of these notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price; and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture. Although this excited no surprise – for he was often an absentee from his office for short periods – yet in due course, and as a formal matter of business, an officer was set to find him, and to ask his explanation regarding the false note. After tracing a man, who he had a strong notion was Mr. Charles Price, through countless lodgings and innumerable disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) "nabbed" Mr. Charles Price. But, as Mr. Clarke observed, his prisoner and his prisoner's lady were even then "too many" for him; for, although he lost not a moment in trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left. Not the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver paper, nor a scrap of any body's handwriting, was to be met with. Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging himself in Bridewell.

The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed; and even after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries – which dates from the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797 – "Old Patch" was still remembered as the Cæsar of Forgers.